Question

I just got a bunch of legacy VB6 (!) code dumped on me and I keep seeing functions declared with an ampersand at the end of the name, for example, Private Declare Function ShellExecute& . . ..

I’ve been unable to find an answer to the significance of this, nor have I been able to detect any pattern in use or signature of the functions that have been named thusly.

Anyone know if those trailing ampersands mean anything to the compiler, or at least if there’s some convention that I’m missing? So far, I’m writing it off as a strange programmer, but I’d like to know for sure if there’s any meaning behind it.

Answer 1

It means that the function returns a Long (i.e. 32-bit integer) value.

It is equivalent to

Declare Function ShellExecute(...) As Long

The full list of suffixes is as follows:

Integer %
Long    &
Single  !
Double  #
Currency @
String  $